The Kisspeptin Protein and Puberty Blockers
The Kisspeptin Protein and Puberty Blockers
an excerpt from LupronGate
The following is an excerpt from LupronGate, this segment describes the brain changes that take place at puberty and questions the impact that pubertal suppression has on these functional and structural brain changes.
Sex Begins in Your Brain
Sex begins in your brain. The human brain’s hardwiring has a built-in programme that sets a course for the development of it’s neural network, which supports and drives and sustains life to such a degree we often have blissful unawareness of these delicate mechanisms driving every moment of our existence. In Figure 1 you can see the amygdala + hypothalamus + pituitary gland to scale. This tiny portion of the brain, of which you never think, governs your experiential existence. Cool, huh?
Sex begins in the brain. It starts it’s journey in the hypothalamus, the brain’s control centre, located deep in the centre of the brain, which secretes gonadotropin-releasing hormone (GnRH) in pulsatile fashion. Then the pituitary, a pea-shaped gland and the master gland of the body that sits just beneath the hypothalamus, wakes up. The pituitary secrets chemicals that wake up the sex organs. We call these chemicals gonadotropins, more commonly leutinising hormone (LH) and follicle stimulating hormone (FSH). Gonadotropins stimulate the gonads — ovaries in a female human and testes in a male human, to produce sex hormones, estrogen (E) + progesterone (P) and testosterone (T).
In the female reproductive system, FSH stimulates an ovarian follicle to ripen, the level of E rises and an ovum is released. P rises to prepare the uterus for implantation. FSH levels fall and LH levels rise to assist the maturation of the ovum and trigger ovulation and the release of the ovum. This happens around day 14 and it is when the fertile period begins, ie when a woman can get pregnant. The phase governed by LH we call the luteal phase (it is the second half of a 28 day cycle). It involves the build up of the endometrium—this is when uncomfortable premenstrual symptoms occur—and ends with menstruation. Day 1 of the period is the beginning of the cycle—E is low and therefore FSH rises and the cycle repeats.
In the pituitary, GnRH regulates the cells that secrete FSH and LH. So, if you want to shut off the reproductive hormone tap, you need to suppress GnRH, which happens in the neurons of the anterior hypothalamus, you can desensitise the pituitary and force it to stop producing gonadotropins. The hypothalamus is considered part of the limbic system, a central command post for coping with the challenges of living within our complex social networks.
Your reproductive system belongs to your neuroendocrine system! Reproductive health vitally impacts the central nervous system and therefore brain health. Descartes was wrong, there is no mind-body dichotomy, the mind is matter we simply cannot see, the mind is a composite of our body’s felt sense in addition to our thoughts which emotions generate — a byproduct of physical and electrical energy fusing inside the human shell case we call the body. Puberty is no more a disease than childbirth or menopause, and it’s important to always remember that we can trigger disease states when we manipulate these three developmental reproductive events irresponsibly.
Kisspeptin For The Win
The hypothalamus is part of the mood + emotion regulation centre of the brain known as the limbic system. Neurons in a particular region of the anterior hypothalamus secrete GnRH to the pituitary gland. A chemical reaction involving a protein called Kisspeptin wakes up these neurons so they can secrete GnRH. A feedback loop exists between sex hormone + the Kisspeptin mechanism. What’s Kisspeptin and what’s it do for the human brain? Why do we need to care about Kisspeptin?
Kisspeptin plays an important role in limbic system activity, behaviour, and modulation of sex hormones … [and has] antidepressant-like effects. Kisspeptin … activates components of the reward system such as the hippocampus, amygdala and the cingulate and enhances the activity of this system … increases emotional and sexual processing and decreases sexual aversion. (Melka et al, 2021)
Okay, what’s that mean, in plain language?
It means that we need to care about Kisspeptin because it plays a crucial role in brain health, especially during puberty, when lots of intense functional pruning and transformation and growth of neurons and their networks and pathways happens. Kisspeptin plays a role in the basic functional brain wiring that govern emotional response such as the reward circuitry and the social circuitry and it augments the brain’s capacity for emotional processing and for sexuality and sexuality expression and connection and desire. Kisspeptin plays a role in the transformation of the adolescent brain—modulating neuronal processes critical for the health of neural pathways laid down during puberty that govern compulsion, habit formation, and relationships with others. Puberty does far more than give a child secondary sex characteristics and the capacity to reproduce. Puberty provides the mechanism through which the child physiologic BIOS metamorphoses into an adult physiologic BIOS. When you shut your computer system during during a BIOS upgrade, you risk bricking your system. Why would you think humans would react any different to interruptions in their BIOS upgrade?
Sex hormones function not only as reproductive messengers but also as neuromodulators—powerful chemical signals that help neurons in the brain grow, prune themselves, and connect. Adolescents exhibit drastic and dramatic intense and erratic and often irrational and impulsive behaviour. Like the terrible twos, adolescence developmentally brings on profound changes in the brain. Growth of the amygdala, and synaptic changes therein, are amongst the functional brain changes that happen during puberty.
Kisspeptin decreases sexual aversion seems like a fairly clear statement. Do puberty blockers de-sex children? Aside from this obvious urgent question, the link between Kisspeptin and puberty blockers concerns me far beyond the reproductive realm. According to the scholarly research I consulted, Kisspeptin is expressed in the medial nucleus of the amygdala only during puberty. The amygdala grows in size and undergoes synaptic pruning as the result of sexual maturation. This seems kind of important —the amygdala determines how a person will emotionally respond in any situation — fear and anger stimulate the amygdala, which secretes chemical signals that warn the body of impending danger.
Kisspeptin is one of the main modulators of the axis that connects the sex organs and the brain and it plays a role in the structure and function of multiple neuronal circuits in the limbic system, a major emotional regulation and control centre in the brain. The limbic system is a part of the brain involved in behavioural and emotional reactions, and disturbances in its functioning may be the source of some psychiatric as well as degenerative disorders. Successful and health human interaction and relationships requires a healthy limbic system. Social connection being a biological imperative like food and water, means the limbic system has an important role to play in childhood growth and development. Kisspeptin has a neuroprotective effect, has positive effects on learning + memory + cognitive functions, and might be implicated in neurogenesis, that is the birth of neurons. Decreased kisspeptin signalling decreases brain metabolism. (Melka et al, 2021)
So, we learned that blocking puberty does more than stop sexual maturation. Blocking puberty also has the effect of blocking the temporal pubertal expression of Kisspeptin Proteins in the amygdala and other parts of the brain’s reward circuitry. This has the effect of reducing the brain’s own capacity for self regulation and self soothing. What other effects does blocking Kisspeptin have on the paediatric brain? What effect does blocking puberty have on the paediatric brain? We have no idea, we still have a lot to discover about Kisspeptin Proteins and we still have a lot to learn about puberty as a neuroendocrine process.